This blog is for sharing creating a space by collective of individuals who fight and resist capitalism, and trying to build a new world, on ruins of capitalism. Against all forms of domination, exploitation, humiliation, in human relations and in other relations. Against all forms of oppression!

13.03.2017. the the ‘left-wing’ Syriza government revealed once more its total capitulation and authoritarianism by evicting two squats in Athens, Greece. More than 200 people were detained during the evictions, with about 100 of them being released again. Refugees with papers were released, while “non-citizens” without papers will be sent to hotspots/camps. The Greek state also raided a self-organized center in the city of Agrinio. The cops vandalized the venue and stole 600€. Several thousand people protested in Athens against the evictions where clashes broke out after cops attacked the demonstration with tear gas.

The Refugee Accommodation Space, City Plaza’s statement:

Repression will not put an end to the squat movement

The evacuation of Villa Zografou and the Alkiviadou squat by police is an act of extreme state authoritarianism. The SYRIZA-ANEL government quickly aligned itself with far-right voices screaming for more repression. While refugees are crammed inside terrible camps, while enormous sums of money are being wasted, while the city is suffocating from the lack of free, non-commercial spaces, the government is opting for a policy of police violence and social suffocation.

Yet they are mistaken if they believe they can crush the squat movement with riot police and district attorneys. The struggle for solidarity and dignity will continue unabated. It is a Social need, it is a political choice.

Refugee Accommodation Space City Plaza

The call for tonight’s demonstration against the evictions was published on squat.net and voidnetwork.gr, as well as other independent media and social networks.

Statement from Void Network:

Two Social Centers In Athens Under Attack / Solidarity Announcement

The repression of social liberation movement and the destruction of the occupied spaces of refugees and immigrants will not be left unanswered. The Greek Left government chose at the dawn of 13/03/2017 to listen to the commands of the conservative right and the neo-liberal Media of Mass Manipulation and attack two occupations of the broader social movement in Athens, Greece. Police raids are an ideal example of the policy imposed by the domination during our era: when we sleep the State continues working against all of us.

The occupation at the beginning of Acharnon Street, very near to the old Villa Amalias squat in the center of Athens was – with the joys and sorrows of the past year-, a real school for all the local solidarity activists that took part in the titanic struggle offering assistance to refugees outside the mechanisms of the regime, as humans to humans over the last years. The occupation of Acharnon was the first example of direct, autonomous and unmediated self-organization of refugees without the presence and participation of local activists. It was a self-organized space of immigrants and refugees by themselves for themselves and this is why it was hit directly by the state.

The occupied park and castle of Villa Zografou in the Zografou area was an important social center of the neighborhood and with a very strong involvement in the uprising of 2008 and the movements that followed until the final uprising of February 12, 2012. At a time of recession for the movements and of the general inaction of society, the State comes to get back every corner conquered by the social movements at a time when they tried to give answers to the capitalist, predatory raids misleadingly named by our oppressors as “CRISIS”.

The fraud of the representation of popular interests in parliament by ridiculous politicians and sold out parties already ended at Syntagma Square in the summer of 2011. The massive illusion of the desperate majority that Syriza wouls “save us” has ended long ago. This attack on the social centers is yet more proof that the left government is nothing more than another form of antisocial “social democracy” in front of us. Syriza is a zombie of PASOK, and while it is dying it continues to grasp at the defense of its own power, and every minute that passes the future of this society is mortgaged away.

The parliament stinks of the plague and those who want to support it with their backs and to irrigate it with their blood have to know that they live at the expense of their children and that they CHILDREN WILL GIVE THEIR ANSWERS. The Future will defend its rights and THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE STRUGGLING.

Re-occupation of all occupations hit by the State – Create squats and social centers across the country in all possible and unlikely places – Liberation of everyday life from all stupid social responsibilities and conventions – Refuse the dominant culture – Recruitment towards the social movements of our time – Support of the movement’s for the spaces with our daily participation

SYMBIOSIS / EQUALITY / TOTAL FREEDOM

Participate at the demonstrations organised in defense of the squats and social centers

A few facts are enough to show the horror of the situation facing the migrants:

On 27 August, in Austria near the Hungarian border, 71 bodies (including 8 women and 4 children) were discovered in an advanced state of decomposition, locked into a lorry abandoned by the roadway;

A few days later, the body of a little boy of three, drowned at the same time as his mother and brother, was washed up on a beach at Bodrum in Turkey.

These were both cases of migrants from Syria fleeing the nightmare of four years of war. This phenomenon of refugees has now been globalised on an unprecedented, going well beyond the exoduses of the worst years of the 20th century.

Propaganda and solidarity

One thing about this is striking. The media are not trying to hide the unbearable horror of the situation. On the contrary, they are headlining it and are coming up with more and more shocking images, like that of the little boy on the beach. Why?

In fact, the bourgeoisie is exploiting, for the purpose of its propaganda, both the barbarism for which it is itself responsible, and the feelings of indignation it provokes, and the spontaneous expressions of solidarity between local working people and migrants which in the last few months has begun to develop in several parts of Europe. The propaganda is aimed at strangling at birth any possibility of independent thought and to instil nationalist ideology in a more insidious way. In the eyes of the ruling class, left to themselves, proletarians in Europe are acting in a curious and even irresponsible way: they are helping and supporting the migrants. Despite the permanent ideological bombardment, we find that very often when these proletarians are in direct contact with the refugees, they bring them what they need to survive – food, drink, blankets – and sometimes even take them in to their homes. We have seen such examples of solidarity in Lampedusa in Italy, Calais in France and a number of cities in Germany and Austria. When, after being hassled by the Hungarian state, train loads of refugees have arrived at the stations, the exhausted migrants have been welcomed by thousands of people offering them support and material aid. Austrian rail workers have worked extra hours to transport the refugees towards Germany. In Paris, thousands demonstrated on 5 September to protest against the treatment of the refugees. They raised slogans like “we are all children of migrants”.

Faced with such massive and international expressions of solidarity from the civil population, when the main concern of the state has been to intimidate the refugees and keep them under control, the ruling class has had to react. Almost everywhere the bourgeoisie has had to modify the anti-immigrant discourse of the last few years and adapt to the situation. In Germany, the turn-around of the bourgeoisie has helped it to strengthen the image of the country as a very advanced democracy, to exorcise the ghosts of the past in response to those of its rivals who never miss an occasion to refer to Germany’s dark history. What’s more, it’s the trauma of the Second World War which explains the sensitivity of the German proletariat to the question of refugees. The German authorities have had to suspend the Dublin agreement which calls for the deportation of asylum seekers. In the eyes of the world’s migrants, Angela Merkel has become the champion of Germany’s openness and a model of humanity. In Britain, David Cameron has had to modify his hard line stance, along with the worst right wing tabloids which up till now have been describing migrants as a threatening and sub-human horde. For the bourgeoisie, one of the key issues has been the need to hide the fact that there are two totally antagonistic logics at work here: capitalist exclusion and ‘every man for himself’ versus proletarian solidarity; a dying system sinking into barbarism versus the affirmation of a class which bears within itself the future flourishing of humanity. The bourgeoisie cannot avoid reacting to the real feelings of indignation and solidarity which are appearing in the central countries.

The spectacular explosion in the number of refugees

The situation is not totally new. In 2012, the High Commission for Refugees (HCR) was already counting 45.2 million “displaced” people and was ringing the alarm bells about this growing human disaster. In 2013, 51.2 million were fleeing various kinds of horror. The threshold of 50 million had thus been crossed for the first time since the Second World War. The HCR explained this as the result of “the multiplication of new crises” and “the persistence of old crises which never seem to die down”. The year 2015 is about to mark a new record: 60 million refugees for Europe alone. Since January, appeals for asylum have increased by 78%. In Germany, according to the minister of the interior, these appeals have quadrupled, reaching the record figure of 800,000. Macedonia has declared a state of emergency and closed its borders. Officially, more than 2800 of these exiles, men, women and children, have drowned in the Mediterranean in the last few months. In Asia, the phenomenon is also massive. For example, a growing number of people have been fleeing repression and persecution in Myanmar and desperately seeking refuge in other southeast Asian countries. In Latin America, criminality and poverty have reached such levels that hundreds of thousands of people are trying to get to the USA. A goods train which goes from the south of Mexico to the north, nicknamed ‘The Beast’, has been regularly carrying thousands of migrants. They run the risk not only of falling from the carriage roofs or being thrown off in the tunnels, but also of being assaulted by the authorities; they are above all at the mercy of the drug gangs or other bandits who ransom them, rape them, kidnap women for prostitution, and as often as not kill them. And for those who have the fortune to get through all this, all along the US frontier they face a wall of barbed wire policed by armed guards who don’t hesitate to shoot at them.

In fact, the hypocritical and civilised speeches of the democratic states go very well with the nastiest and most xenophobic rants. The first encourages feelings of powerlessness, the second of fear. Both obstruct any real reflection, any real development of solidarity.

A phenomenon accentuated by the reality of decomposition

Entire zones of the planet are being devastated and made uninhabitable. This is particularly the case for the regions linking Ukraine to Africa via the Middle East. In certain of these war zones, half the population is in flight and are being held in gigantic camps, at the mercy of the most unscrupulous traffickers, organised on an industrial scale. The real cause of this hell is the decay of the world system of exploitation. The breadth of the refugee phenomenon is a clear expression of the downward spiral of capitalism, which brings in its wake pogroms and violence of all kinds, growing pauperisation linked to the economic crisis, and ecological catastrophes. Of course wars, crises and pollution are not new. All wars have led to people fleeing to save their lives. However, the intensity of these phenomena is growing all the time. Up until the First World War, the number of refugees remained relatively limited. The war then brought the beginning of massive displacements, ‘population transfers’ etc. This spiral took on a whole new dimension with the Second World War, when the number of refugees reached unheard-of levels. Then, during the Cold War, the numerous proxy wars between east and west generated a significant number of refugees, as did the famines in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 70s and 80s. But since the collapse of the eastern bloc in 1989 a veritable Pandora’s box has opened up. The antagonism between the two imperialist blocs imposed a certain order and discipline: most countries obeyed the diktats of their respective bloc leader, the US or Russia. The wars of this period were inhuman and murderous, but in a sense they were ‘ordered’ and ‘classical’. Since the collapse of the USSR, growing instability has given rise to a multiplication of local conflicts, to all sorts of shifting alliances. Conflicts have gone on and on, resulting in the disintegration of states and the rise of warlords and gangsters, in the dislocation of the entire social fabric.

In addition, the contradictions between the imperialist powers (marked by the development of ‘every man for himself’, in which each nation plays its own imperialist card with increasingly short-term objectives), have led the latter to make military interventions in an increasingly regular, almost permanent manner. Each of the big powers support this or that mafia clique or warlord, this or that increasingly irrational band of fanatics, in the defence of their imperialist interests. What dominates in capitalist society today is the disintegration of entire regions, where the most crying expressions of social decomposition can be seen: whole regions controlled by drug gangs, the rise of Islamic State with its barbaric atrocities, etc.

The bunkerisation of the great powers

The states which bear the main responsibility for all this social, ecological and military chaos have at the same time become real fortresses. In a context of unemployment and chronic crisis, security measures are being stepped up to a drastic degree. States have become ‘bunkerised’. Only the most qualified migrants are allowed in to be exploited, to lower the cost of labour power and create divisions within the proletariat. The majority of refugees and migrants, the ‘undesirable’ ones, those reduced to misery and starvation, are cynically enjoined to stay where they are and die without inconveniencing anyone. The northern states have literally chased them into a corner, as in the case of France with its ‘Jungle’ near the Channel Tunnel at Calais. Gangrened by a crisis of overproduction, capitalist society can no longer them any perspective. Instead of opening up, the doors are being closed: states are barricading their frontiers, electrifying fences, constructing more and more walls. During the Cold War, the time of the Berlin Wall, there were about 15 walls defending frontiers. Today more than 60 have been built or are being constructed. From the ‘apartheid wall’ raised by Israel in the face of the Palestinians, to the 4000 miles of barbed wire separating India from Bangladesh, states are falling into a real paranoia about security. In Europe, the Mediterranean front is littered with walls and barriers. Last July, the Hungarian government began construction of a four meter high razor wire fence. As for the Schengen space in Europe, and the work of the Frontext agency or Triton, their industrial-military effectiveness is formidable: a permanent fleet of surveillance and war ships there to prevent refugees from crossing the Mediterranean. A similar military machine has been set up along the Australian coastline. All these obstacles seriously raise the mortality rate among refugees, who are forced to take more and more risks to get past them.

The cynicism of the bourgeoisie

On the one hand, the bourgeois state is barricading itself in. It feeds to the maximum the warnings of doom coming from the most xenophobic populist parties, sharpening hatred, fear and division. Themselves facing deteriorating living conditions, the weakest sections of the proletariat are hit full on by this nationalist propaganda. In a number of countries there have been anti-migrant marches, physical attacks, arson attack on refugee centres. The refugees are the target of campaigns against ‘foreigners who threaten our way of life’. The state legitimises all this by setting up internment camps (over 400 in Europe), deporting those it can, patrolling the frontiers.

On the other hand, this same bourgeoisie fakes its indignation through the voice of politicians who talk about the ‘moral challenge’ posed by the refugees and offers them token support and assistance. In short, the capitalist state, the arch-criminal, poses as their saviour.

But as long as capitalism lasts, there can be no real solution for the migrants and the refugees. If we don’t fight against this system, if we don’t go to the roots of the problem, our indignation and solidarity will not go beyond the stage of basic aid, and the deepest and most noble human feelings will be recuperated by the bourgeoisie, turned into heavily publicised acts of charity which will be used to fuel a more hidden form of nationalism. Therefore, we must try to understand what’s really happening. The proletariat has to develop its own critical and revolutionary point of view on these questions.

In future articles, we will return in more depth to this historic issue.

Chaos broke out yesterday afternoon at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City. 2 students and a dog were injured by bullets after judicial police fired live rounds on UNAM campus. The officer who shot them has been detained but the incident and what ensued afterwards have caused tensions in Mexico to reach a fever pitch.

The Che Guevara auditorium in UNAM has been used for almost 10 years as a location for student assemblies. UNAM was granted autonomy in 1929 under a series of “organic laws” which established the university’s academic freedom and independence from government. The university has its own campus security force.

When 5 judicial police officers entered UNAM campus and started taking pictures, students were suspicious and approached them to ask that they leave, citing that the police presence on campus was a violation of the university’s autonomy. The judicial police agents alleged they were there to investigate a report of a stolen cell phone which has been met with much sarcasm in social media and interpreted as a flimsy pretense to commit what students view as police espionage on UNAM campus.

“Breaking: The Attorney General informs of the discovery of a grave full of cell phones, none correspond to the one sought in University City”

Just after students approached the judicial police to leave requesting that they leave, shots were fired and 2 students plus one dog were injured. According to official reports, the police fired warning shots in the air and are claiming self defense.

One student was hit in the leg, another was grazed by a bullet – both are in stable condition. Also the dog of one of the students in Che Guevara auditorium was injured but we are told that students got the dog to a vet in time and it should recover.

After firing “warning shots into the air” and injuring UNAM students, the judicial police fled dropping an ID badge and leaving their car behind. The officer who fired on the students has been arrested according to the local prosecutor. Students secured the car that was left behind by the judicial police in order to preserve potential evidence for investigators. Later in the evening, unknown hooded individuals set the car on fire.

Car belonging to judicial police elements that shot students at UNAM campus November 15

On November 8 at a protest in the Zocalo of Mexico City, the front door of the presidential palace was set on fire. Reports circulated afterwards that the door was set on fire by infiltrators and was not something that had been planned in that night’s actions. Our sources say that a similar event occurred last night and that students did not burn this car on UNAM campus.

After the vehicle was set on fire granaderos (federal police) arrived on the campus, which only escalated tensions further. Video (below) shows more police aggression towards the students last night. Thankfully no injuries or arrests were reported and federal police were ordered to retreat.

The government of Mexico City has issued an apology to the university community for the incidents that occurred in University City (CU) and offered assurances they will act in strict adherence to the law. Protests have been raging all day today after yesterday’s police aggression on UNAM campus and protests are expected to continue and escalate in the coming days.

A caravan of parents and family of the missing normalistas from Ayotzinapa are traveling through Mexico right now, spreading word about the 43 missing students (please see our Mexico archives for background info). They are headed for the Zocalo in Mexico City and are scheduled to arrive on November 20, coinciding with the Mexican holiday Dia de la Revolución. The next few days are expected to be very large protests in Mexico and if security forces continue to provoke students, it will only serve to incite bigger protests.

– To fellow students and teachers at Country Normal School “Raúl Isidro Burgos” Ayotzinapa, Guerrero:
– To Relatives of the dead and kidnapped from the Country Normal School “Raúl Isidro Burgos”
– To the people of Mexico:
– Comrades:

The bloody state repression against the Normal School Rural “Raúl Isidro Burgos” students in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, 26th and 27th September 2014, murdered 6 companions, and 20 wounded 43 students missing. The killers were the Borought, State and Federal polices, supported by the Mexican Army. All three, Boruoght, State and Federal governments have conspired to carry out and cover up the infamous State crime.

Our hearts are sore, it hurts the deaths of our brothers. It hurts the absence and forced disappearance of our peers. We grieve the pain of the relatives, classmates and teachers from the Normal Rural Schoorl “Raúl Isidro Burgos” of Ayotzinapa, Guerrero.

We are outraged and rebels against the pain, death and the forced disappearance of our Ayotzinapan brothers.

Fellow Rural Normal School “Raúl Isidro Burgos” their pain is our pain, their rebellion is our rebellion. We embrace as embraces a brother in arms.

IGUALA, Mexico — Masked assailants Wednesday set fire to the city hall in Iguala in a rampage triggered by the failure of Mexican authorities to resolve the case of 43 missing student teachers.

Dozens of protesters, many wearing masks, broke away from a peaceful march of thousands of people who were demanding that the missing student teachers be returned alive.

Flinging rocks and using poles as battering rams, the protesters broke into the city hall, which was closed, and shattered windows and smashed computers. Several protesters carried Molotov cocktails, and around 1:30 p.m., acrid black smoke began billowing out of several areas of the building.

No federal police, who have taken control of this city about 100 miles southwest of Mexico City, responded to the rampage as it unfolded over the course of an hour.

No injuries were apparent.

The attack marked an escalation of protests in the Pacific Coast state of Guerrero, where tensions have been high since scores of student teachers went missing Sept. 26 after clashing with municipal police. Those clashes left six people dead and some 20 injured. Police rounded up 43 other students, but their fate is unknown.

Iguala’s mayor and security chief fled after the bloodshed amid evidence that they had been collaborating with a regional criminal gang, Guerreros Unidos, or United Warriors.

Federal authorities later found six mass graves and retrieved 23 bodies from them but have not yet determined if the bodies belong to any of the missing students, all of whom were from a rural teachers college that is a bastion of radicalism.

Earlier in the day, Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam laid blame for the missing students on fugitive ex-Mayor Jose Luis Abarca and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, who was the city’s director of social services before fleeing with her husband.

Murillo Karam said several of the 52 police officers, municipal officials and United Warriors members who’ve been detained in the case have told authorities that Abarca ordered city police to halt the students lest they interrupt a public speech by his wife, who had been seeking the mayor’s post.

Police from Iguala and the nearby town of Cocula, which Murillo Karam said was also controlled by the United Warriors, conducted the roundup of the students and turned them over to three United Warriors members, who transported them toward an outlying community, Pueblo Viejo, he said.

The arson attack on the city hall in Iguala marked the fourth time this month that protesters have burned buildings, a rising tide of violence dogging President Enrique Pena Nieto as the dramatic disappearances drag on unresolved.

On Tuesday, some 200 teachers set fire to the regional office of the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution in the state capital, Chilpancingo. The party, which controls the state government, is reeling amid opposition calls for its governor, Angel Aguirre, to resign. The fire gutted part of the building. Protesters also overturned a car and spray-painted graffiti, including the slogan, “We want them back alive.”

Before dawn on Monday, masked protesters set fire to an office of a state social assistance program, Guerrero Cumple, in Chilpancingo, burning computers and filing cabinets and leaving a charred mess.

The most damage was caused Oct. 14, when masked protesters rampaged through state government installations in Chilpancingo, setting several buildings on fire.

The Pena Nieto government announced this week a reward of the equivalent of $111,000 for information leading to the whereabouts of any of the missing 43 students.

All of the students are male, mostly in their late teens or early 20s. Most are sons of poor farmers and want to become teachers as a way out of poverty.

Even if this is one of the worst stories of racist violence in the last years, in court only few people is standing on the side of Walid, 3,4 parents, few friends from Salamina and one representative of the Egyptian Embassy.
A litle bit further the defendants: the baker, his son and two friends of them. “If i see you again around in Salamina i will send you directly back in Egypt” said to him his former employer the last spring out of the court.
It is recalled that, the defendants Giorgio Sgourdos, owner of the bakery in Salamina and employer of the victim, his son (member of golden dawn) and a friend of him of Albanian origin they are the likely suspects for the case of kidnapping, torture and the thieft of saving that Walid Taleb was saving for months, wich they left chained for hours in a stable in Salamina.
Unemployed for two years, with serious health problems (hi is almost blind from one eye), in poverty-struck (the former employer have to pay him about 7.000 euros from the that he stall to him-they were the saves of months of allot of Egyptians in Salamina) with his family in Alexandria, Walid is finally waiting for justice and he states that he wants to stay in Greece.

The Council of the European Union is organizing from 13 to October 26, 2014 a major joint operation with the Schengen Member States, Europol and Frontex, called “Mos maiorum”

First, let’s look at the racist and even fascist overtones of the name Mare Maiorum:
The moss majorum (or moss maiorum) means “old ways” or “ancestral customs” and in ancient Rome, lifestyle and the system of ancestral values​​. It is often taken as a reference, and contrasts with the spectacle of decadence of the present world !!!!
The five fundamentals of moss majorum are:

What a program! The choice of code name has been a source of his denunciation !!

All possible migration routes in Europe will be checked in all Schengen States and Europe’s external borders,
the objectives being:
-Arrest “illegal” immigrants and gather information in view of investigation
-Identify, hunt and disrupt the organized crime groups
-Consolidate joint actions to prevent “illegal” migration
-Look at the routes used by migrants and migration networks.
-Collect and analyze the information related to secondary movements also

Controls at airports, train stations, ports, borders and other strategic places (train, bus, metro, tram?) will be strengthened without a doubt. So be careful.

Istanbul anarchists along other leftists, feminists, and ‘Gezi park types’ have managed to cross over into Syria and the northern town of Kobane which is currently threatened by ISIS.

Vice reported yesterday that ISIS is within 5 miles of the city and are attacking with US military equipment including tanks that outmatches the weapons available to the YPG – Kurdish People’s Protection Units . Vice also reported that “Hundreds of Turkish Kurds are arriving too, sneaking or bribing their way across the border to fight alongside the YPG”

The photo shows a banner of the anarchist group DAF apparently just after the border has been crossed. The statement we were sent says “People are suffering from hunger and thirst, getting ill, getting injured; migrating and dying. They are still fighting in that struggle for existence. People are fighting not for the schemes and strategies around meeting tables, not for income, but for their freedom”

We hope to bring more details and further photos as they become available

“Thousands of young people, socialists, trade unionists, revolutionary, feminist, libertarian poured in from all over Turkey to Kobanê. They and they go there to support and defend the city réfugié.es.

The Turkish army tries to disperse them, as she is accused of being much more permissive with the jihadists who are trying, too, to cross the border to join Daech.

Despite the dams of the Turkish army, hundreds of activists and militants have managed to cross the border. Among them, the comrades of the Revolutionary Anarchist Action Group, who made the trip to Istanbul to join the defense of Kobanê, and sent these photos

In this Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2014 photo released by the U.S. Air Force, a formation of U.S. Navy F-18E …

BEIRUT (AP) — U.S.-led airstrikes targeted Syrian oil installations held by the extremist Islamic State group overnight and early Thursday, killing at least 19 people as more families of militants left their key stronghold, fearing further raids, activists said.

The strikes aimed to knock out one of the militants’ main revenue streams — black market oil sales that the U.S. says earn up to $2 million a day for the group. That funding, along with a further estimated $1 million a day from other smuggling, theft and extortion, has been crucial in enabling the extremists to overrun much of Syria and neighboring Iraq.

The United States and its Arab allies have been carrying out strikes in Syria for the past three days, trying to uproot the group, which has carved out a self-declared state straddling the border, imposed a harsh version of Islamic law and massacred opponents. The U.S. has been conducting air raids against the group in neighboring Iraq for more than a month

On the ground, Syria’s civil war raged on unabated, with government forces taking back an important industrial area near Damascus from the rebels, according to Syrian activists and state media. Activists also accused President Bashar Assad’s troops of using an unspecified deadly chemical substance.

The Islamic State group is believed to control 11 oil fields in Iraq and Syria. The new strikes involved six U.S. warplanes and 10 more from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, mainly hitting small-scale refineries used by the militants in eastern Syria, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said.

At least 14 militants were killed, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the Syrian conflict through a network of activists on the ground.

The Observatory and two independent activists said another five people who lived near one of the refineries were also killed, likely the wives and children of the militants.

Kirby said the Pentagon is looking into reports that civilians were killed but has no evidence yet.

Other strikes hit checkpoints, compounds, training grounds and vehicles of the Islamic State group in northern and eastern Syria. The raids also targeted two Syrian military bases that had been seized by the Islamic State group. In the eastern Syrian town of Mayadeen, a building used by the militants as an Islamic court was also hit.

Apparently fearing more strikes, the militants reduced the number of fighters on their checkpoints, activists said. Many of the casualties the group has sustained in the American-led air raids have been at checkpoints. Activists also said that more families of Islamic State militants were clearing out of the city of Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital, on Thursday, heading eastward.

For some Syrians, the airstrikes were bitter justice.

“God has imposed on you just a part of what you have done, but you are even more criminal,” wrote Mahmoud Abdul-Razak on an anti-Islamic State group Facebook page, saying that the airstrikes were divine punishment.

But other Syrians see coalition strikes as serving Assad’s interests because they do not target government forces and because some have hit the Nusra Front, Syria’s al-Qaida affiliate that has battled both the Islamic State and Assad’s forces

Some opposition activists saw the strikes on the Nusra Front as a sign of a wider operation targeting other Syrian militants among the anti-Assad rebellion seen as a potential threat by the United States.

“All of this is to serve Bashar, and yet people believe the Americans are protecting the Syrians,” said Saad Saad, writing on the same Facebook page.

A rebel fighter in the northern Aleppo province who only identified himself by his nom de guerre, Ramy, said the U.S. airstrikes appear coordinated with the flights of Syrian military planes, which would disappear from the skies shortly before the U.S.-led coalition aircraft show up.

“It’s like they coordinate with each other,” Ramy told The Associated Press over Skype. “The American planes come and they go.”

The Observatory reported fewer Syrian airstrikes in the past three days — likely because of the presence of the coalition aircraft. Still, bombing continued in a rebel-held area near Damascus, killing at least 8 people, including children, reported the Observatory and activist Hassan Taqulden.

Syrian Kurdish fighters also reported three airstrikes near a northern Kurdish area, which Islamic State militants have been attacking for nearly a week, prompting more than 150,000 people to flee to neighboring Turkey.

The Kurdish fighters said the U.S.-led coalition was likely behind the strikes in the area known as Ayn Arab, or Kobani to the Kurds. A spokesman for the fighters, Reydour Khalil, pleaded again that the coalition coordinate with them, claiming that the overnight strikes were not effective and struck abandoned bases.

“We are willing to cooperate with the U.S. and its alliance” by providing positions and information about the militants’ movements, Khalil said.

Elsewhere in Syria, Assad’s forces wrested back the rebel-held industrial area of Adra near Damascus after months of clashes.

On a government-organized tour of the area Thursday, the smell of dead bodies hung in the air amid the bombed-out buildings and torched cars. An unnamed commander accompanying the journalists said that the military dismantled 17 car bombs, and that soldiers were working to disarm more of them.

The government forces seized the Adra industrial zone after rebels accused them of using chemical explosives there on Wednesday. Footage of the wounded from the incident, in which six people were killed, showed men jerking uncontrollably and struggling to breathe before their bodies went limp.

The footage, posted on social networks, appeared genuine and consistent with The Associated Press reporting of the event depicted. But the footage did not suggest what chemical — if any — was used on the men.

Mass protests in Turkey have flared up once again following the death of a boy who died Tuesday night from an injury inflicted by police during last summer’s country-wide wave of protests.

Tens of thousands of protesters filled the streets of Istanbul Wednesday to mourn the death of Berkin Elvan, 15, whose death followed 269 days in a coma after having sustained a blow to the head by a tear gas canister fired by police.

One year after the Jungle eviction, the hunt against migrants is as vicious as ever. People keep arriving in Calais, hoping to cross the channel to the UK. They are now met with a zero tolerance policy: shelters destroyed, demonstrations broken up, people rounded up in the streets, as deportations are scheduled to vicious states […]

Following the publication of a communiqué claiming responsibility for a fire in a garage at a Grenoble police depot (gendarmerie) during the night of September 20th/21st, Indymedia Grenoble and Indymedia Nantes have been threatened by the French police. The administrators of these sites received emails from the Central Office for the Fight Against Crime Linked […]

Linksunten.indymedia.org, the main independent media website in Germany, was banned by the German government's Ministry of Interior on August 25. Maintaining the website and using its logo are now considered criminal offenses in the country. Linksunten volunteers are being prosecuted as a "club," which means that administrators are considered responsible for everything that has been […]

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info In the early morning of September 30, with the help of a fire extinguisher filled with paint, we repainted brown the exterior façade of JS RP Tech Informatique, owned by Robert Proule, located at 6117 … Continue reading →

A man in St Helens, Merseyside managed to climb onto the roof of the local cop shop on 9th October triggering a stand off for 9 hours with cops. The man sprayed graffiti on the walls including ‘Fuck the police’, … Continue reading →

Free Zapatista textbook

BANKS TO THE PEOPLE!

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks…will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. – Thomas Jefferson in the debate over the Re-charter of the Bank Bill (1809)